Call to Action #2: November 30 Balance Testing - Page 26

s3rp

Germany3192 Posts

November 30 2012 20:50 GMT

#501

20 HP off the Eggs ? Really ? Really ?

This change does nothing to anything.

If you want to change IT make them not benefit from upgrades , make them more expensive but last longer or if you want to nerf the Eggs make them the same HP as the IT themselves or something along those lines. But this is a joke .

Hider

Denmark9376 Posts

November 30 2012 20:52 GMT

#502

On December 01 2012 05:48 Salteador Neo wrote:

Show nested quote +

Yep that's a big factor too.

Infestors being OP is part of the game being solved so fast IMO. I mean just look at the evolution of the game in the last year, after all early to mid game strategies got nerfed to the ground. Every protoss attack is an allin, even when on 3 bases. We see valuable ghost, thor, raven or BC play in 1/10 games at most. The most innovative thing by zerg I've seen was Leenock stutter stepping hydras against Infested Terrans xD

In BW we had surprising shit and new strats even after 10+ years in it.

I think the game was going to be "solved" anyway. BW took longer time to solve as there were no replay sharing for a long time, competitive RTS was new etc.

I agree that if the game was better designed viewers would probably be a couple of thousands higher, but some people still lose interest over time, it's unavoidable with the current business model of Sc2.

Hider

Denmark9376 Posts

November 30 2012 20:55 GMT

#503

On December 01 2012 05:35 TrippSC2 wrote:

Show nested quote +

On December 01 2012 05:15 Hider wrote:

On December 01 2012 05:08 TrippSC2 wrote:

On December 01 2012 04:42 Hider wrote:
If you want some numbers.

The average terran master player is at top 4.32% of his race. For zerg that is 6.26%.

The average terran GM is at top 0.17% of his race. For zerg that is 0.31%.

So is the average terran player worse than the average zerg? Possibly. Let's just assume that there are roughly 25000 (which is close to 25% of all terran players in bronze) terran players in bronze who absolutely suck and almost never play and jsut remove them from the equation.
The results for terran is now; 4.96% vs 6.26%. and 0.2% vs 0.31%

Still clear signs of superior terran players facing inferior zerg players.

Blizzard definitely needs to use the ladder distribution and combine it with other metrics (e.g. they could also use metrics such as solo games played, teamgames played, as active players probably are better than non-active players to help determine the "estimated skill level").

Regardless of what they do, it is almost avoidable that terran through an adjusted balance metrics will heavily underpowered.

I'm not necessarily saying that I disagree with you, but be careful about how much faith you put in that type of a metric.

There are several factors that influence MMR distribution that aren't related to balance. You already mentioned that Terran has a dis-proportionally large number of Bronze players (most likely because of the campaign), but there are any number of outside factors that can skew the distribution one way or another.
Maybe one race is easier to learn than the other, so more players end up in higher leagues of one race than another (not takes less skill, just more straight-forward to learn). Maybe because one race is harder to learn at low levels, so more players gave up playing while in low leagues or switched to another race robbing the player pool of skilled and dedicated players.

To be clear, I'm not implying that any of this IS the case, just that it CAN be the case with this type of metric.

I kind of agree. I think Blizzard should look at several "adjusted metrics".

Then Blizzard could determine how the game is balanced at the highest level, the second highest level etc..
That the game is easier to learn for race x isn't a huge problem designwise, but still an optimal balanced game would have all races equally balanced across the various skill levels.
But Blizzard them selves could determine what kind of numbers they are justified with (maybe they are fine with the game being 40-60 at gold level if it is very close to 50-50 at master/gm).

But I think Blizzard should hire a full-time mathguy to assist Dustin Browder/David Kim. From what I gathered from their comments, I don't think they really understand how to interpret statistics or they don't know how to develop usefull metrics (which isn't that easy either but a math guy could come up with usefull metrics).

I'm sure they have access to the numbers you're talking about. You can only take educated guesses about their meaning, but that's all. A mathematician can't tell you what the numbers mean, only present the numbers.

Great statisticans are masters of interpreting numbers and understanding the assumptions behind it. Liberal arts guys like DB.... probably not so much (which is why he thought the game was balanced with siege tanks doing 60 damge to everything back in beta......).

So it is of course still important the statistics-guy understands Starcraft decently (just like an econometricans needs to understand macroeconomics etc.), because he needs to estimate the realism of the assumptions.

Scila

Canada1849 Posts

November 30 2012 21:01 GMT

#504

On November 30 2012 21:57 Rabiator wrote:

Show nested quote +

Yes ... its testing the patience of the community with that inept bunch of devs. IF they wanted to do real tests they should start with REAL changes like nerfing the range for Infestor abilities to 6-7 or increasing the range of the Seeker Missile trigger to 9 or lowering the energy required to 100 ... but not with this bunch of shit.

This exactly. This is why people are upset.

Plansix

United States60190 Posts

November 30 2012 21:02 GMT

#505

On December 01 2012 05:52 Hider wrote:

Show nested quote +

Replays in BW were a special level of non-sense that people put up with because it was all they had. There is a reason we use supply and not game time to tell when to build things, because BW had no clock. Also, there were a lot of simple things we take for granted now that were “revolutionary” in BW. There was an era when transferring your excess workers from your main to your natural was “new” and “brilliant”. Now we just do it and it is common sense.

WoL is a very basic, but solid, foundation for Blizzard and the community to build on. There is huge room for improvement, but foundation is there. From what I have played of HotS, there is some good stuff there. The infestor will not need to be the unit it is right now in HotS, which is good for everyone.

Mrvoodoochild1

United States1439 Posts

November 30 2012 21:02 GMT

#506

I don't play WOL anymore so I'm indifferent to these changes but I will never pass up an opportunity to call Browder and his boys at blizz a bunch of incompetent pricks. Fuck you Browder.

User was temp banned for this post.

Mosoball

Finland686 Posts

November 30 2012 21:04 GMT

#507

Why not take upgrades away from Infested terrans and broodlings? That would make them as viable as they are midgame but make them weaker later on

A.Alm

Sweden515 Posts

November 30 2012 21:05 GMT

#508

That's it.

I'm out.

See.Blue

United States2673 Posts

November 30 2012 21:05 GMT

#509

This seems like a poor solution for infestors to me

Tryagain4free

81 Posts

November 30 2012 21:11 GMT

#510

"Call to Action"

LOL

s3rp

Germany3192 Posts

November 30 2012 21:16 GMT

#511

Would anybody explain why Eggs have double the HP of IT's in the first place? You can spam so many of them anyway why do they need more HP then IT's themselves ?.

LuckoftheIrish

United States4791 Posts

November 30 2012 21:17 GMT

#512

There are a lot of people who won't be satisfied unless the Infestor is removed from the game.

Hider

Denmark9376 Posts

November 30 2012 21:18 GMT

#513

On December 01 2012 06:16 s3rp wrote:
Would anybody explain why Eggs have double the HP of IT's in the first place? You can spam so many of them anyway why do they need more HP then IT's themselves ?.

so they don't die quickly... doh....

s3rp

Germany3192 Posts

November 30 2012 21:19 GMT

#514

On December 01 2012 06:18 Hider wrote:

Show nested quote +

so they don't die quickly... doh....

But shouldn't they die quickly ? I mean they only cost 25 Energy . You can spam them and unlike Autoturrets they deal BIG damage.

MrF

United States320 Posts

November 30 2012 21:22 GMT

#515

blizzard is scared of overbalancing so they make stupid useless changes instead o

nottapro

202 Posts

November 30 2012 21:24 GMT

#516

On December 01 2012 06:17 LuckoftheIrish wrote:
There are a lot of people who won't be satisfied unless the Infestor is removed from the game.

I am a terran player, i think the infestor is great. I hope it doesn't get nerfed to death. I'd rather see the corrupter nerfed.

urbaNo

United States47 Posts

November 30 2012 21:24 GMT

#517

as hopeful as i am that the state of the game will get better, every single action that blizzard takes makes their reputation with the community worse and worse. its gonna end up like WOW, if they ever get to a point where the game is fixed, by that time nobody will care anymore. i try my best to be sympathetic for the devs, but at this point i am not sure how DB and DK are still in charge after the abysmal job they have been doing for 2 well over 2 years. -________________________-

ShamW0W

160 Posts

November 30 2012 21:31 GMT

#518

On December 01 2012 05:50 Hider wrote:

Show nested quote +

On December 01 2012 05:33 ShamW0W wrote:

On December 01 2012 05:11 Hider wrote:

On December 01 2012 05:01 ShamW0W wrote:
The only statistics that matter imo would be statistics at the very top level of play. I don't care how many players of race X or race Y are in Masters or GM, that's irrelevant to how balanced the game actually is. At the very top level though you'll get rid of factors like matchmaking and severely reduce the variable level of skill between player to get a more accurate representation of how well-balanced your game is.

I have a limited view but most of the tournament results I have seen recently suggest that P and Z are outperforming T. Not quite as much as some people think but from what I've seen it's there.

Where the Psionic change was probably too large of a change I feel this current one is too small. It doesn't address the core issue that players can still mass Infestors and hold their own because it's too much of a catch all unit.

Nerf Fungal, Nerf Infested Terran, buff the Hydralisk. Players shall rejoice.

That's one way of balancing the game. But the problem is how do we look at that?

GSL code s sample size is way too volatile (sample size to low) to be meaningfull alone. GM results from the ladder oculd be used (higher sample size) and according to those numbers, terran is heavily underpowered as well (through quite a lot of seasons).

Me personally? I'd prefer the small sample size, even though it's volatile, over using the larger sample size of GM players across the ladders.

For instance, in tournaments or leagues where the prize pool is $5k+, what are the racial win rates since the last patch? How have those rates evolved over the last few months as players have adapted to the current meta game? Are we trending closer to a more balanced game as players learn the metagame or is one race becoming dominant over the others?

You can use statistics to inform balance changes but ultimately there's a level of intuition about the game that a designer must have to make the best call for the game.

edit: If there's data for this already it'd be awesome to see.

Well I think Blizzard should look at several metrics.

Then could of course design a high-level tournament win rate metric and weight it according to the signifcance of the results and for how important they believe it is.

But logically, why would there by any signifcant difference between top-top level and GM results on the ladder? (I know there is one argument which states that people play different on the ladder than tournament but that is not really relevant here as it probably is the similar for all three races).
Sure there are also players who are bad at tournamaents/good at ladder, but again, on average we expect this to even out.

In the end, I just think GM results on the ladder is a more important metric than high level tournament play which suffers from low sample sizes and could be biased due to many korean terrans being invited and few korean toss's/korean zerg's (over a large sample size this would probably be evened out as well, but this just leads to very volatile).

So I guess we can't just look at this tournmanet metric quantiatively. We have to combine it with a qualitive analysis which Blizzard also do, but this is a very difficult task for a small team, and honestly I don't think they are doing a particular good job (though they aren't awfull either - the game is still somewhat balanced, but due to design flaws of the game it makes it difficult to balance the infestor etc.).

Also, I dont agree that it's completely irrelevant that the game is balanced at master level/diamond level etc. Sure top level play should have highest priority, but balance matters for the playing experience and if players are unsatifised they could stop watching the game --> killing esports etc.

I think there's a HUGE difference between top competitive play and GM level ladder play. Hard to state just how large the difference it since it's incredibly subjective but it's there.

Using statistics from ladder play is tough for various reasons:
Matchmaking exists to try and push people to 50/50 win rates
Playing for money is a MUCH larger motivator for playing optimally than playing for ladder points
Individual players can have multiple accounts across multiple ladders

That's not to say that ladder statistics are useless or irrelevant but with an e-sport you want to balance for the absolute top level of play. The play experience for Diamond and Masters level players is definitely important, I fall into that bucket, but would require a re-design of certain mechanics and I don't think Blizzard is hip to that level of suggestion right now. (yes, I said hip)

Naphal

Germany2099 Posts

November 30 2012 21:31 GMT

#519

the thing is, do they really expect players to sacrifice time for testing these "changes"?

i mean i felt the fungal attempt was too much pvz wise, but this is basically doing nothing, and i wish they would stop saying its a raven buff, the unit is not buffed in any way and has LOTS of issues.

Scila

Canada1849 Posts

November 30 2012 21:31 GMT

#520

Starcraft 2 is like Titanic. When it was came out it was the biggest and the greatest thing ever, with tons of hype. It dwarfed everything that came before it. The creators (Blizzard) said it was unsinkable. Then Titanic went on its maiden voyage with Blizzard at the helm. Due to poor navigation they encountered the iceberg (crappy, premature balance patches). The smart people didn't believe the reassurance of the captain that everything would be alright, and went for the lifeboats. The rest were satisfied as he told the crew to use a bathing towel (tiny balance changes) to block the 5 foot holes in the hull. Now everyone still on board is rapidly sinking to the bottom of the ocean.

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Call to Action #2: November 30 Balance Testing - Page 26

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