On December 01 2012 13:32 Wombat_NI wrote: Mutalisks are not non-viable, even if scouted. Mutalisk-centric play is not bad, but it's not the best option available to Zergs at present.
I said they still work, I didn't say they are currently the best option.
On December 01 2012 11:19 Wombat_NI wrote: I actually cannot believe how retarded people are being about this. I genuinely can't, even posters I normally respect are posting nonsense here.
The reason (most) of us bitch about the infestor isn't due to fungal being too good, or infested terrans being too good, but that they are too good, and too versatile, taking away the infestor being a useful support unit, and making it obligatory.
It's patently, fucking, obvious, that Blizzard are tweaking small things with each of the infestor's abilities to try and figure out to what degree they can nerf each of them, while maintaining the utility of the infestor.
If the infestor was like the ghost, when snipe was dominating everything, they WOULD nerf that one ability, 100%. I am convinced of this. However, the infestor being 'overpowered' is in relation to both of its abilities, either that they're too good individually, or too good for one caster to have both, in its current form.
Blizzard are obviously trying to isolate the two spells in these testing maps, and trying to find values that balance them, independently. They aren't retarded, they know that they could straight up nerf the infestor, and how they could do that. They are merely trying to think about how this is done, and to what degree this is done through testing out a multitude of ideas.
Imagine if the marine was thought of as overpowered, in that the community overwhelming thought so, and demanded action. Any kind of nerf would be enormously complex because the marine affects every single Terran matchup, and close to every single Terran composition. Thus it would have to be a careful, considered process of balancing due to the HUGE impact that getting it wrong would have.
Why is this a bad approach? Can somebody please tell me why? I am genuinely curious.
"After testing the adjustment to Fungal Growth, we found it to be too big of a change."
This. And I agree. Wombat, I'd like to know how the infestor is not like the ghost
the ghost was used to counter Ultralisks/Broodlords as well as EMP infestors
Infestors are useful against marines, do extra dmg to marauders, can lock hellions to prevent lings from being kited, fungal vikings, ravens and banshees to lock them into place for corruptors or queens, lob infested terran to circumvent the range advantage of siege tanks, use mass infested terran spawning to "nuke" buildings (and killing the infestor doesn't kill all of the IT), can mind control units up to 3 times their supply, can cloak for no energy, etc
i really dont think this is the comparison you want to make, haha
obviously, there are more "holes" in the zerg race which the infestor is required to fill and terran doesn't need these roles filled by the ghost as much, but I just think your point is pretty weak
Infestor is not like the ghost because it's strength comes from multiple abilities and other aspects of the unit, in addition to the spells.
The ghost had a 'catch-all' feel against Zerg tier 3, in that it was very good against both ultras and Broods. In that respect it IS similar to the Infestor, which has a feeling of 'good against everything'. However, it was also easily identifiable and fixable, because that strength was predicated on the strength of the snipe ability. That is ONE ability.
Consider all these differing units of the infestor. The infestor is so good, not just because of its abilities, but the versatility that they have.
1. Fungal. Very, very strong ability, even in terms of pure stats. However it has a lot of other uses bar fungalling bio or whatever. It shuts down medivacs, and indeed is the standard counter to banshee and Protoss void/phoenix play, after a certain point.
2. Infested Terrans. Extremely strong, especially against an army without AoE. Has a lot of other uses such as spamming them to snipe Nexuses, or to deal with Carrier play, or attempts to vortex. Also good against Terran in sniping medivacs, or using them to soak a tank volley to allow Zerglings to flank better.
Now, how the fuck do you balance all these applications of the infestor? You can't just think of a change and throw it out there, you have to strike a balance between making the infestor less 'catch-all', and making the infestor useless.
So you're justifying that infestors cannot be nerfed because they are way more broken than ghosts? What? I don't know what kind of games you've seen, but the coherent problem in TvZ had nothing to do with infested terrans. It's 99.5% fungal growth that Terrans DO NOT have an answer to in late game. In fact, infestors are exactly like the ghost. Lategame T has no answer to fungal, much like how Z didn't have one to snipe not EMP or cloak or some other complementary spell. As for the question of how the fuck does one balance infestors? You simply nerf fungal. The bottom line is, Blizzard's been trigger happy when it came to nerfing Terrans. Didn't give much time for players to sort it out. Regardless of where the infestor stands today, the inequality that Blizzard is showing by taking a full year before addressing an issue and saying "oh, we'll nerf eggs by 20hp" doesn't do jack about the coherent problem that fungal growth has created as Zergs actually found out how to abuse it.
Let me ask you a question in return. Do you honestly think that by leaving the infestors just because it serves a core role in the Zerg arsenal justifies the game's balance being destroyed by a single unit?
You misunderstand me. I play Protoss primarily, with a bit of Terran. I hate the infestor, and fungal more than almost anything else in the game.
I believe it needs to be nerfed, 100%
My point is that when the ghost, and snipe was considered too powerful, that was it. It was SNIPE that was super strong, and by nerfing that, the 'problem' was gone. It was clearly identifiable, and thus easy to fix. I still feel it should have been left longer before being nerfed,. incidentally.
Consider a world where the marine had more range, DPS and health than they do now. A world where Terrans built every single strategy around marines.
To rebalance that, you have to identify what is broken about the numbers before you can actually fix it. With a targetted, incremental approach to the above 'super-marine', I believe that over time the marine would come down and exist as it does today statistically. They'd have to firstly though, consider:
Is the range too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? Is the DPS too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? IS the HP too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to?
On December 01 2012 13:32 Wombat_NI wrote: Mutalisks are not non-viable, even if scouted. Mutalisk-centric play is not bad, but it's not the best option available to Zergs at present.
I said they still work, I didn't say they are currently the best option.
Didn't say you did! I was referring to the guy claiming that Mutalisk use being prevalent in the current GSL somehow 'proved' that they were equivalent to Infestor-based plays.
On December 01 2012 13:40 Wombat_NI wrote: To rebalance that, you have to identify what is broken about the numbers before you can actually fix it. With a targetted, incremental approach to the above 'super-marine', I believe that over time the marine would come down and exist as it does today statistically. They'd have to firstly though, consider:
Is the range too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? Is the DPS too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? IS the HP too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to?
Things like cost or supply can also be used to balance a unit, some tweaking could be done for Infestors there.
On December 01 2012 13:41 Wombat_NI wrote: Didn't say you did! I was referring to the guy claiming that Mutalisk use being prevalent in the current GSL somehow 'proved' that they were equivalent to Infestor-based plays.
On December 01 2012 13:40 Wombat_NI wrote: To rebalance that, you have to identify what is broken about the numbers before you can actually fix it. With a targetted, incremental approach to the above 'super-marine', I believe that over time the marine would come down and exist as it does today statistically. They'd have to firstly though, consider:
Is the range too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? Is the DPS too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to? IS the HP too good? - If yes, what is a suitable value to change it to?
Things like cost or supply can also be used to balance a unit, some tweaking could be done for Infestors there.
On December 01 2012 13:41 Wombat_NI wrote: Didn't say you did! I was referring to the guy claiming that Mutalisk use being prevalent in the current GSL somehow 'proved' that they were equivalent to Infestor-based plays.
OK. (;
I actually think part of the solution is a 3 supply infestor. However, that doesn't deal with other parts of why the Infestor is retarded. It does partly mitigate the more ridiculous excesses, those 30+ infestor balls though.
Basically, when trying to change something with multiple variables, all of which are part of the issue, it's not something you can throw out ideas at without testing them pretty thoroughly.
Changes; @Fungal - Reduce move speed in 75% - Can't affect Caster type /ghost, raven, High Templar, Mothership, Infestor - Infestors cost 3supply
@Infested Terran - Can't share upgrades carapace and ranged
@Broodlings - Can't share upgrades carapace and melee
I still think Ghosts can be the awnser in TvZ. In those first engages where Zergs have no Overseer, just a blast of EMP's will do wonders.. And still after sniping the seers.
On December 01 2012 11:19 Wombat_NI wrote: I actually cannot believe how retarded people are being about this. I genuinely can't, even posters I normally respect are posting nonsense here.
The reason (most) of us bitch about the infestor isn't due to fungal being too good, or infested terrans being too good, but that they are too good, and too versatile, taking away the infestor being a useful support unit, and making it obligatory.
It's patently, fucking, obvious, that Blizzard are tweaking small things with each of the infestor's abilities to try and figure out to what degree they can nerf each of them, while maintaining the utility of the infestor.
If the infestor was like the ghost, when snipe was dominating everything, they WOULD nerf that one ability, 100%. I am convinced of this. However, the infestor being 'overpowered' is in relation to both of its abilities, either that they're too good individually, or too good for one caster to have both, in its current form.
Blizzard are obviously trying to isolate the two spells in these testing maps, and trying to find values that balance them, independently. They aren't retarded, they know that they could straight up nerf the infestor, and how they could do that. They are merely trying to think about how this is done, and to what degree this is done through testing out a multitude of ideas.
Imagine if the marine was thought of as overpowered, in that the community overwhelming thought so, and demanded action. Any kind of nerf would be enormously complex because the marine affects every single Terran matchup, and close to every single Terran composition. Thus it would have to be a careful, considered process of balancing due to the HUGE impact that getting it wrong would have.
Why is this a bad approach? Can somebody please tell me why? I am genuinely curious.
because this change does literally nothing.
If the change does nothing, Blizzard will see that it does nothing and look at other ways of tweaking the Infestor. It's not bad to identify this, at all.
@ZAINs and aksfjh As I see it, they're not saying say, fungal is fine. They're saying the specific changes they were trying didn't work, that they didn't have the desired, proportional change that Blizzard were looking for.
At no point have I seen a Blizzard employee come out since this process started and said 'fungal is fine', or that the infestor is fine overall.
It's implicit. In the past, the timetable has been: 1) Something looks broken, and the community complains 2) We wait for Blizzard acknowledgement, sometimes it takes more than 6 months 3) Blizzard notes that they're looking at it, sometimes offers a general direction of their response 4) Blizzard comes out with a test map (or PTR long ago) 5) If needed, Blizzard comes up with a revised test map that reverts or adds changes 6) Blizzard releases patch
We have yet to see an "isolated" approach to balance. It has always been direct changes, and iterative changes. By taking out the fungal change and only going back to IT, they have implicitly decided that fungal isn't the problem, nor is the infestor as a whole.
That pattern is correctly identified, and was applicable to how Blizz used to patch for sure. I do feel that their new 'hands-off unless entirely necessary' approach, with a more measured way of balancing is actually a tangible thing, but I might be wrong. I am reading between the lines when it comes to what I feel is motivating Blizz with their attempts to re-balance the infestor, and their reasoning. I might be wrong though, because it's conjecture.
The Queen/overlord change was the last change I feel they made arbitrarily, by that I mean without fitting into the 'Something looks broken, and the community complains' part of your post. The kind of change that was Blizzard trying to fix the game themselves without being based on community grievances (by and large).
When the change was proposed in the abstract form, very few people disagreed with it, conceptually. When it was being tested, few people, even the pros saw a problem with it. I do remember Kawaiirice being a notable exception, and even he didn't disagree with the changes before he actually got to test them.
However, when the pros properly got their hands on the new Queens and speedy overlords, and refined their useage, we have the current (worse imo) metagame of Zergs getting a 'free pass to hive'. I also believe that Blizzard did not want their patch to lead to that either. It was an attempt to change the 'stale' TvZ metagame, but not with the intention of creating another stale metagame that benefited Zerg.
It's that kind of unintentional consequence that I am close to 100% convinced that Blizzard do NOT want to produce with the infestor changes, hence why I am happy for them to change things slowly. Basically, I'd rather them find a solution that is correct and functions properly, than try to apply a solution that is something random and untested, throw it out, see if it works, that might have a huge consequence of the game.
Also, on an unrelated note, it's threads full of whiners like these who convince me that Blizzard will NEVER try to redesign more fundamental concepts, even in LoTV. If people are bashing them for taking their time on a complex change like the Infestor changes, how can we ever, ever expect them to look at something more complex like Warpgates?
That is something that many people, even Protoss players like me would like to see, although I know it's stated that this option is currently off the table according to Browder
The overlord change was a response to the classic tale that Zergs just didn't have good scouting options in the early game (fast 2 base timings mainly). When the test came out for it, a lot of players, Terran and Protoss alike thought the overlord change was justified and good. It was a subtle change a lot of people saw a need for and saw the reasoning behind.
The queen change(s) were heralded as too much though, and relatively unasked for. Protoss argued a lot about them in regards to zealots, and it was mostly a fruitless and incorrect argument. Terran argued about them because hellions would ALWAYS take damage when applying pressure. The first change (+25 energy) was regarded as bad as a whole for the same reason the range was, the scouting advantage should solve the minor problems Zerg had.
The primary reason I point this out specifically is because it's still regarded as a bad patch that went too far by a huge chunk of the community, but Blizzard hasn't said anything about it or reverting (at least a tiny bit) the changes in the patch. So far, even with some of the most severe kneejerk balance patches, like thor energy and ghost snipe, Blizzard has shown no regret for those patches. There are no hints that they're afraid of changing too much or that they're particularly afraid of long term unintended consequences.
My personal view of the situation is that Blizzard doesn't see a (big) problem with Zerg right now. They're responding to a consistent outcry from the community that Zerg is too powerful, and taking a conciliatory route by nerfing the unit people want nerfed, infestors.
On December 01 2012 11:19 Wombat_NI wrote: I actually cannot believe how retarded people are being about this. I genuinely can't, even posters I normally respect are posting nonsense here.
The reason (most) of us bitch about the infestor isn't due to fungal being too good, or infested terrans being too good, but that they are too good, and too versatile, taking away the infestor being a useful support unit, and making it obligatory.
It's patently, fucking, obvious, that Blizzard are tweaking small things with each of the infestor's abilities to try and figure out to what degree they can nerf each of them, while maintaining the utility of the infestor.
If the infestor was like the ghost, when snipe was dominating everything, they WOULD nerf that one ability, 100%. I am convinced of this. However, the infestor being 'overpowered' is in relation to both of its abilities, either that they're too good individually, or too good for one caster to have both, in its current form.
Blizzard are obviously trying to isolate the two spells in these testing maps, and trying to find values that balance them, independently. They aren't retarded, they know that they could straight up nerf the infestor, and how they could do that. They are merely trying to think about how this is done, and to what degree this is done through testing out a multitude of ideas.
Imagine if the marine was thought of as overpowered, in that the community overwhelming thought so, and demanded action. Any kind of nerf would be enormously complex because the marine affects every single Terran matchup, and close to every single Terran composition. Thus it would have to be a careful, considered process of balancing due to the HUGE impact that getting it wrong would have.
Why is this a bad approach? Can somebody please tell me why? I am genuinely curious.
because this change does literally nothing.
If the change does nothing, Blizzard will see that it does nothing and look at other ways of tweaking the Infestor. It's not bad to identify this, at all.
@ZAINs and aksfjh As I see it, they're not saying say, fungal is fine. They're saying the specific changes they were trying didn't work, that they didn't have the desired, proportional change that Blizzard were looking for.
At no point have I seen a Blizzard employee come out since this process started and said 'fungal is fine', or that the infestor is fine overall.
It's implicit. In the past, the timetable has been: 1) Something looks broken, and the community complains 2) We wait for Blizzard acknowledgement, sometimes it takes more than 6 months 3) Blizzard notes that they're looking at it, sometimes offers a general direction of their response 4) Blizzard comes out with a test map (or PTR long ago) 5) If needed, Blizzard comes up with a revised test map that reverts or adds changes 6) Blizzard releases patch
We have yet to see an "isolated" approach to balance. It has always been direct changes, and iterative changes. By taking out the fungal change and only going back to IT, they have implicitly decided that fungal isn't the problem, nor is the infestor as a whole.
That pattern is correctly identified, and was applicable to how Blizz used to patch for sure. I do feel that their new 'hands-off unless entirely necessary' approach, with a more measured way of balancing is actually a tangible thing, but I might be wrong. I am reading between the lines when it comes to what I feel is motivating Blizz with their attempts to re-balance the infestor, and their reasoning. I might be wrong though, because it's conjecture.
The Queen/overlord change was the last change I feel they made arbitrarily, by that I mean without fitting into the 'Something looks broken, and the community complains' part of your post. The kind of change that was Blizzard trying to fix the game themselves without being based on community grievances (by and large).
When the change was proposed in the abstract form, very few people disagreed with it, conceptually. When it was being tested, few people, even the pros saw a problem with it. I do remember Kawaiirice being a notable exception, and even he didn't disagree with the changes before he actually got to test them.
However, when the pros properly got their hands on the new Queens and speedy overlords, and refined their useage, we have the current (worse imo) metagame of Zergs getting a 'free pass to hive'. I also believe that Blizzard did not want their patch to lead to that either. It was an attempt to change the 'stale' TvZ metagame, but not with the intention of creating another stale metagame that benefited Zerg.
It's that kind of unintentional consequence that I am close to 100% convinced that Blizzard do NOT want to produce with the infestor changes, hence why I am happy for them to change things slowly. Basically, I'd rather them find a solution that is correct and functions properly, than try to apply a solution that is something random and untested, throw it out, see if it works, that might have a huge consequence of the game.
Also, on an unrelated note, it's threads full of whiners like these who convince me that Blizzard will NEVER try to redesign more fundamental concepts, even in LoTV. If people are bashing them for taking their time on a complex change like the Infestor changes, how can we ever, ever expect them to look at something more complex like Warpgates?
That is something that many people, even Protoss players like me would like to see, although I know it's stated that this option is currently off the table according to Browder
The overlord change was a response to the classic tale that Zergs just didn't have good scouting options in the early game (fast 2 base timings mainly). When the test came out for it, a lot of players, Terran and Protoss alike thought the overlord change was justified and good. It was a subtle change a lot of people saw a need for and saw the reasoning behind.
The queen change(s) were heralded as too much though, and relatively unasked for. Protoss argued a lot about them in regards to zealots, and it was mostly a fruitless and incorrect argument. Terran argued about them because hellions would ALWAYS take damage when applying pressure. The first change (+25 energy) was regarded as bad as a whole for the same reason the range was, the scouting advantage should solve the minor problems Zerg had.
The primary reason I point this out specifically is because it's still regarded as a bad patch that went too far by a huge chunk of the community, but Blizzard hasn't said anything about it or reverting (at least a tiny bit) the changes in the patch. So far, even with some of the most severe kneejerk balance patches, like thor energy and ghost snipe, Blizzard has shown no regret for those patches. There are no hints that they're afraid of changing too much or that they're particularly afraid of long term unintended consequences.
My personal view of the situation is that Blizzard doesn't see a (big) problem with Zerg right now. They're responding to a consistent outcry from the community that Zerg is too powerful, and taking a conciliatory route by nerfing the unit people want nerfed, infestors.
This is the video I always use when talking about why the 'Queen patch' was terrible. Idra's actually pretty spot on in this video when he's talking. The idea that, in the absence of good scouting, you need to be able to blindly defend is pretty sensible. You need at least one of either good information, or good capacity to defend without information.
What Blizzard did was improve both Zerg's capacity to scout, and blindly defend. It also had other incidental effects such as making the creep spread of almost every Zerg player a bit better.
The creep should also be looked at, in my view. Someone like Seal or Scarlett who have great creep spread will still be creep-spreading monsters, but some Zergs are coasting on the new trend towards more early Queens giving them almost inevitable improvements in creep spreading proficiency.
On December 01 2012 11:19 Wombat_NI wrote: I actually cannot believe how retarded people are being about this. I genuinely can't, even posters I normally respect are posting nonsense here.
The reason (most) of us bitch about the infestor isn't due to fungal being too good, or infested terrans being too good, but that they are too good, and too versatile, taking away the infestor being a useful support unit, and making it obligatory.
It's patently, fucking, obvious, that Blizzard are tweaking small things with each of the infestor's abilities to try and figure out to what degree they can nerf each of them, while maintaining the utility of the infestor.
If the infestor was like the ghost, when snipe was dominating everything, they WOULD nerf that one ability, 100%. I am convinced of this. However, the infestor being 'overpowered' is in relation to both of its abilities, either that they're too good individually, or too good for one caster to have both, in its current form.
Blizzard are obviously trying to isolate the two spells in these testing maps, and trying to find values that balance them, independently. They aren't retarded, they know that they could straight up nerf the infestor, and how they could do that. They are merely trying to think about how this is done, and to what degree this is done through testing out a multitude of ideas.
Imagine if the marine was thought of as overpowered, in that the community overwhelming thought so, and demanded action. Any kind of nerf would be enormously complex because the marine affects every single Terran matchup, and close to every single Terran composition. Thus it would have to be a careful, considered process of balancing due to the HUGE impact that getting it wrong would have.
Why is this a bad approach? Can somebody please tell me why? I am genuinely curious.
because this change does literally nothing.
If the change does nothing, Blizzard will see that it does nothing and look at other ways of tweaking the Infestor. It's not bad to identify this, at all.
@ZAINs and aksfjh As I see it, they're not saying say, fungal is fine. They're saying the specific changes they were trying didn't work, that they didn't have the desired, proportional change that Blizzard were looking for.
At no point have I seen a Blizzard employee come out since this process started and said 'fungal is fine', or that the infestor is fine overall.
It's implicit. In the past, the timetable has been: 1) Something looks broken, and the community complains 2) We wait for Blizzard acknowledgement, sometimes it takes more than 6 months 3) Blizzard notes that they're looking at it, sometimes offers a general direction of their response 4) Blizzard comes out with a test map (or PTR long ago) 5) If needed, Blizzard comes up with a revised test map that reverts or adds changes 6) Blizzard releases patch
We have yet to see an "isolated" approach to balance. It has always been direct changes, and iterative changes. By taking out the fungal change and only going back to IT, they have implicitly decided that fungal isn't the problem, nor is the infestor as a whole.
That pattern is correctly identified, and was applicable to how Blizz used to patch for sure. I do feel that their new 'hands-off unless entirely necessary' approach, with a more measured way of balancing is actually a tangible thing, but I might be wrong. I am reading between the lines when it comes to what I feel is motivating Blizz with their attempts to re-balance the infestor, and their reasoning. I might be wrong though, because it's conjecture.
The Queen/overlord change was the last change I feel they made arbitrarily, by that I mean without fitting into the 'Something looks broken, and the community complains' part of your post. The kind of change that was Blizzard trying to fix the game themselves without being based on community grievances (by and large).
When the change was proposed in the abstract form, very few people disagreed with it, conceptually. When it was being tested, few people, even the pros saw a problem with it. I do remember Kawaiirice being a notable exception, and even he didn't disagree with the changes before he actually got to test them.
However, when the pros properly got their hands on the new Queens and speedy overlords, and refined their useage, we have the current (worse imo) metagame of Zergs getting a 'free pass to hive'. I also believe that Blizzard did not want their patch to lead to that either. It was an attempt to change the 'stale' TvZ metagame, but not with the intention of creating another stale metagame that benefited Zerg.
It's that kind of unintentional consequence that I am close to 100% convinced that Blizzard do NOT want to produce with the infestor changes, hence why I am happy for them to change things slowly. Basically, I'd rather them find a solution that is correct and functions properly, than try to apply a solution that is something random and untested, throw it out, see if it works, that might have a huge consequence of the game.
Also, on an unrelated note, it's threads full of whiners like these who convince me that Blizzard will NEVER try to redesign more fundamental concepts, even in LoTV. If people are bashing them for taking their time on a complex change like the Infestor changes, how can we ever, ever expect them to look at something more complex like Warpgates?
That is something that many people, even Protoss players like me would like to see, although I know it's stated that this option is currently off the table according to Browder
The overlord change was a response to the classic tale that Zergs just didn't have good scouting options in the early game (fast 2 base timings mainly). When the test came out for it, a lot of players, Terran and Protoss alike thought the overlord change was justified and good. It was a subtle change a lot of people saw a need for and saw the reasoning behind.
The queen change(s) were heralded as too much though, and relatively unasked for. Protoss argued a lot about them in regards to zealots, and it was mostly a fruitless and incorrect argument. Terran argued about them because hellions would ALWAYS take damage when applying pressure. The first change (+25 energy) was regarded as bad as a whole for the same reason the range was, the scouting advantage should solve the minor problems Zerg had.
The primary reason I point this out specifically is because it's still regarded as a bad patch that went too far by a huge chunk of the community, but Blizzard hasn't said anything about it or reverting (at least a tiny bit) the changes in the patch. So far, even with some of the most severe kneejerk balance patches, like thor energy and ghost snipe, Blizzard has shown no regret for those patches. There are no hints that they're afraid of changing too much or that they're particularly afraid of long term unintended consequences.
My personal view of the situation is that Blizzard doesn't see a (big) problem with Zerg right now. They're responding to a consistent outcry from the community that Zerg is too powerful, and taking a conciliatory route by nerfing the unit people want nerfed, infestors.
This is the video I always use when talking about why the 'Queen patch' was terrible. Idra's actually pretty spot on in this video when he's talking. The idea that, in the absence of good scouting, you need to be able to blindly defend is pretty sensible. You need at least one of either good information, or good capacity to defend without information.
What Blizzard did was improve both Zerg's capacity to scout, and blindly defend. It also had other incidental effects such as making the creep spread of almost every Zerg player a bit better.
The creep should also be looked at, in my view. Someone like Seal or Scarlett who have great creep spread will still be creep-spreading monsters, but some Zergs are coasting on the new trend towards more early Queens giving them almost inevitable improvements in creep spreading proficiency.
Even when Idra agrees with me, I hate the guy.
This was the general consensus among pros at the time though. Zerg had plenty of defensive options, and losses involving a scouted all-in generally had to do with a Zerg mistake instead of a specific weakness.
Blizzard attempted to fix the creep problem back in August, but decided it wasn't necessary. There were feelings in the community that the lack of Zergs winning the most recent tournaments (and MVP winning some) persuaded Blizzard to back off the changes.
On December 01 2012 11:19 Wombat_NI wrote: I actually cannot believe how retarded people are being about this. I genuinely can't, even posters I normally respect are posting nonsense here.
The reason (most) of us bitch about the infestor isn't due to fungal being too good, or infested terrans being too good, but that they are too good, and too versatile, taking away the infestor being a useful support unit, and making it obligatory.
It's patently, fucking, obvious, that Blizzard are tweaking small things with each of the infestor's abilities to try and figure out to what degree they can nerf each of them, while maintaining the utility of the infestor.
If the infestor was like the ghost, when snipe was dominating everything, they WOULD nerf that one ability, 100%. I am convinced of this. However, the infestor being 'overpowered' is in relation to both of its abilities, either that they're too good individually, or too good for one caster to have both, in its current form.
Blizzard are obviously trying to isolate the two spells in these testing maps, and trying to find values that balance them, independently. They aren't retarded, they know that they could straight up nerf the infestor, and how they could do that. They are merely trying to think about how this is done, and to what degree this is done through testing out a multitude of ideas.
Imagine if the marine was thought of as overpowered, in that the community overwhelming thought so, and demanded action. Any kind of nerf would be enormously complex because the marine affects every single Terran matchup, and close to every single Terran composition. Thus it would have to be a careful, considered process of balancing due to the HUGE impact that getting it wrong would have.
Why is this a bad approach? Can somebody please tell me why? I am genuinely curious.
because this change does literally nothing.
If the change does nothing, Blizzard will see that it does nothing and look at other ways of tweaking the Infestor. It's not bad to identify this, at all.
@ZAINs and aksfjh As I see it, they're not saying say, fungal is fine. They're saying the specific changes they were trying didn't work, that they didn't have the desired, proportional change that Blizzard were looking for.
At no point have I seen a Blizzard employee come out since this process started and said 'fungal is fine', or that the infestor is fine overall.
It's implicit. In the past, the timetable has been: 1) Something looks broken, and the community complains 2) We wait for Blizzard acknowledgement, sometimes it takes more than 6 months 3) Blizzard notes that they're looking at it, sometimes offers a general direction of their response 4) Blizzard comes out with a test map (or PTR long ago) 5) If needed, Blizzard comes up with a revised test map that reverts or adds changes 6) Blizzard releases patch
We have yet to see an "isolated" approach to balance. It has always been direct changes, and iterative changes. By taking out the fungal change and only going back to IT, they have implicitly decided that fungal isn't the problem, nor is the infestor as a whole.
That pattern is correctly identified, and was applicable to how Blizz used to patch for sure. I do feel that their new 'hands-off unless entirely necessary' approach, with a more measured way of balancing is actually a tangible thing, but I might be wrong. I am reading between the lines when it comes to what I feel is motivating Blizz with their attempts to re-balance the infestor, and their reasoning. I might be wrong though, because it's conjecture.
The Queen/overlord change was the last change I feel they made arbitrarily, by that I mean without fitting into the 'Something looks broken, and the community complains' part of your post. The kind of change that was Blizzard trying to fix the game themselves without being based on community grievances (by and large).
When the change was proposed in the abstract form, very few people disagreed with it, conceptually. When it was being tested, few people, even the pros saw a problem with it. I do remember Kawaiirice being a notable exception, and even he didn't disagree with the changes before he actually got to test them.
However, when the pros properly got their hands on the new Queens and speedy overlords, and refined their useage, we have the current (worse imo) metagame of Zergs getting a 'free pass to hive'. I also believe that Blizzard did not want their patch to lead to that either. It was an attempt to change the 'stale' TvZ metagame, but not with the intention of creating another stale metagame that benefited Zerg.
It's that kind of unintentional consequence that I am close to 100% convinced that Blizzard do NOT want to produce with the infestor changes, hence why I am happy for them to change things slowly. Basically, I'd rather them find a solution that is correct and functions properly, than try to apply a solution that is something random and untested, throw it out, see if it works, that might have a huge consequence of the game.
Also, on an unrelated note, it's threads full of whiners like these who convince me that Blizzard will NEVER try to redesign more fundamental concepts, even in LoTV. If people are bashing them for taking their time on a complex change like the Infestor changes, how can we ever, ever expect them to look at something more complex like Warpgates?
That is something that many people, even Protoss players like me would like to see, although I know it's stated that this option is currently off the table according to Browder
The overlord change was a response to the classic tale that Zergs just didn't have good scouting options in the early game (fast 2 base timings mainly). When the test came out for it, a lot of players, Terran and Protoss alike thought the overlord change was justified and good. It was a subtle change a lot of people saw a need for and saw the reasoning behind.
The queen change(s) were heralded as too much though, and relatively unasked for. Protoss argued a lot about them in regards to zealots, and it was mostly a fruitless and incorrect argument. Terran argued about them because hellions would ALWAYS take damage when applying pressure. The first change (+25 energy) was regarded as bad as a whole for the same reason the range was, the scouting advantage should solve the minor problems Zerg had.
The primary reason I point this out specifically is because it's still regarded as a bad patch that went too far by a huge chunk of the community, but Blizzard hasn't said anything about it or reverting (at least a tiny bit) the changes in the patch. So far, even with some of the most severe kneejerk balance patches, like thor energy and ghost snipe, Blizzard has shown no regret for those patches. There are no hints that they're afraid of changing too much or that they're particularly afraid of long term unintended consequences.
My personal view of the situation is that Blizzard doesn't see a (big) problem with Zerg right now. They're responding to a consistent outcry from the community that Zerg is too powerful, and taking a conciliatory route by nerfing the unit people want nerfed, infestors.
This is the video I always use when talking about why the 'Queen patch' was terrible. Idra's actually pretty spot on in this video when he's talking. The idea that, in the absence of good scouting, you need to be able to blindly defend is pretty sensible. You need at least one of either good information, or good capacity to defend without information.
What Blizzard did was improve both Zerg's capacity to scout, and blindly defend. It also had other incidental effects such as making the creep spread of almost every Zerg player a bit better.
The creep should also be looked at, in my view. Someone like Seal or Scarlett who have great creep spread will still be creep-spreading monsters, but some Zergs are coasting on the new trend towards more early Queens giving them almost inevitable improvements in creep spreading proficiency.
Even when Idra agrees with me, I hate the guy.
This was the general consensus among pros at the time though. Zerg had plenty of defensive options, and losses involving a scouted all-in generally had to do with a Zerg mistake instead of a specific weakness.
Blizzard attempted to fix the creep problem back in August, but decided it wasn't necessary. There were feelings in the community that the lack of Zergs winning the most recent tournaments (and MVP winning some) persuaded Blizzard to back off the changes.
Actually, you've inadvertently made me fearful now that Infestors won't change, damnit man and I was so hopeful!
They could have changed creep in such a way so the really good spreaders weren't punished, but the bad ones were. The fact they didn't is actually worrying me now because I feel I may have given Blizz too much credit in my earlier posts
On December 01 2012 14:56 ClanRH.TV wrote: Thats a single storm that can kill a a number of closely set eggs. Pretty solid for protoss.
Except like has already been addressed multiple times in this thread, a single storm will not kill the eggs because they have passive health regeneration.
On November 30 2012 17:47 Talack wrote: To everyone saying that 1 storm kills eggs now.
It doesn't go check it yourself in the map editor, the egg will heal 1 hp and will spawn immediately after.
So this change is actually completely useless then, what's the point of playing a test map where the game is almost exactly the same other than ravens starting with seeker missile?
If they change the way the AI works with amove priority on eggs maybe some progress can be made with a change like this...
Not really, though. If the change is not working, then they know that it's not working and try something else or tweak some more. There's a saying in my lab that sometimes negative results can also tell you more than positive one. So at least, they can get data whether it's working or not.
This change as it is will not work and they shouldn't waste time testing it, if they were going to change egg HP to 80 they should have removed auto regenerate from eggs. As it is this does nothing when a single hostile zerg unit is within amove range of your units, as they will not attack the eggs without manual targeting. and don't try to tell me that you should manually target down 30+ IT eggs at 1 hp.
This is the video I always use when talking about why the 'Queen patch' was terrible. Idra's actually pretty spot on in this video when he's talking. The idea that, in the absence of good scouting, you need to be able to blindly defend is pretty sensible. You need at least one of either good information, or good capacity to defend without information.
What Blizzard did was improve both Zerg's capacity to scout, and blindly defend. It also had other incidental effects such as making the creep spread of almost every Zerg player a bit better.
The creep should also be looked at, in my view. Someone like Seal or Scarlett who have great creep spread will still be creep-spreading monsters, but some Zergs are coasting on the new trend towards more early Queens giving them almost inevitable improvements in creep spreading proficiency.
Even when Idra agrees with me, I hate the guy.
This was the general consensus among pros at the time though. Zerg had plenty of defensive options, and losses involving a scouted all-in generally had to do with a Zerg mistake instead of a specific weakness.
Blizzard attempted to fix the creep problem back in August, but decided it wasn't necessary. There were feelings in the community that the lack of Zergs winning the most recent tournaments (and MVP winning some) persuaded Blizzard to back off the changes.
From what you just said, you and IdrA weren't agreeing. He was making the point that scouting in the first place was too hard. Therefore they needed a better defensive option if they can't scout or a method to scout more easily. I don't think that that was the consensus among pro's at the time or they wouldn't have incorporated the changes that they did.
EPT
